Online ad spending to cover entire earth by year 3000

[Tags: interactivepr, pr]. I exaggerate, of course. All these predictions are getting tiring...

From the Online Publishers Association:

Forrester: Online ad market to nearly double by '10
Week after week, the online advertising market gets hotter and hotter, and a pair of researchers believe the trend will continue for years to come. Forrester projects that online advertising will rise 23% this year to $14.7 billion, then blasting up to $26 billion by 2010, raking in 8% of all ads. Plus, paid search ads will leap from $4.2 billion in 2004 to $11.6 billion by 2010, Forrester predicts. Marketers who were surveyed said online advertising was better at driving Web traffic, delivering promotions and generating sales leads. They're also interested in utilizing new ad channels, with 64% saying they're interested in ads on blogs, 57% on RSS feeds and 52% on mobile devices. eMarketer joined in the bullish projections, saying online advertising would grow 34% this year, reaching $12.9 billion. The firm predicted rich media ads would jump 47%, and said Google and Yahoo would dominate in ad sales, taking in 23% and 21% of all online ad revenues in '05, respectively.

»	Forrester: Online Ad Spending Will Reach $26B by 2010 (DMNews)
»	Forrester: Online Ad Spend To Reach $14.7 Billion In 2005 (MediaPost)
»	2005 Internet Ad Spending Predictions Revised Upwards (AdAge)
»	Online advertising on upswing (News.com)
»	Online ad sellers think local (News.com)

Online surveys

[Tags: interactivepr, pr]. Thanks to my colleague Caroline Wilson for pointing me to SurveyMonkey, an online survey creator, a potentially very useful tool for online PR. Sadly it does cost (around $20 per month), but it rather helpfully provides links to dozens of competitors, who it says cost much more. Of course you could build a survey yourself if you have those technical skills, but for those with a budget and the need to delegate this looks a nice option to have.

Consumers, Blogs and Trusted Sources of Information

[Tags: interactivepr, pr]. Interesting piece of research about the impact of blogs on purchasing decisions and the importance of trust in that. To quote Emergence Marketing's post on the research:

"While his research does not find much impact of blogs on purchasing decisions yet – he lists the reasons why people “trust’ a blog. Not surprisingly, those reasons include:

• their view of the credibility of the author and content;
• the amount of traffic they perceive the blog to be getting;
• the number of other sites linking to the blog;
• how active the blog is;
• the look and feel of the blog

"... Companies ... need to jump into the fray and start participating in those conversations. And when they are ready, they have three options to do that:

• do it directly and in a controlled fashion – that is when companies have one or more executives or PR employees blog within strict guidelines (i.e., stay on message)
  
• do it directly but in an uncontrolled fashion – that is when companies encourage their employees to blog and give them the freedom to say what they want (there are many examples of companies embracing such blog strategies – Microsoft, hopefully IBM, etc.)
  
• hire outsiders to do it for you – that is when a company hires existing bloggers to write on their behalf.

"The second option is clearly the best strategy to quickly gain trust for what is being said, but unfortunately I suspect that many companies will not be able to embrace such openness."

Ironically, this comes at the same time as this story about bloggers being paid to sing the praises (or "shill") of certain products and services. To quote:

"The problem is that the posts are not reviews at all. They are in fact paid advertisements disguised to look like the actual view or opinions of the person or consumer writing the blog.

"The blogger is not required to say anywhere in the post that the views presented have been paid for by the advertiser. Even though it’s common practice for advertisers to write copy that has the look and feel of a news story or a consumer endorsement, according to the FTC they are required to include that the information in the article or review is in fact a paid advertisement.

"So who’s responsible for violating the FTC guidelines? Would it be the responsibility of the agency or company that approved and paid for the review (ad) or their client, and not that of the person writing and posting to their blog. In other words, the blogger is merely writing poor copy that amounts to a deceptive ad. Or does the responsibility rest on the shoulders of the blogger posting the paid review on their site without disclosing that the reviews are actually paid advertisements?

"I phoned the FTC to ask how these rules apply to bloggers. Unfortunately they were unable to answer my question."

It would be well worth investigating how these rules apply in Britain as well...

New PR blog

[Tags: interactivepr, pr]. PR student magazine Behind the Spin has launched a blog which promises to update every Monday. Also worth checking out is the host - Philip Young's - own blog, Mediations, which covers similar areas.

Choosing Keywords People Actually Use

Useful article from the Search Engine Journal on how to choose keywords when using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).